Conor McGregor is without doubt the biggest star the world of mixed martial arts has ever seen. Often controversial but always entertaining, the Irishman’s name on a pay-per-view event represents a financial windfall for everyone involved.

As a result, any card displaying McGregor’s name as one half of the main event attracts huge attention and last Saturday’s UFC 246 was no different. Taking place in a sold-out T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and broadcast live on PPV, millions of people parted with money to enjoy the extravaganza. Of course, countless thousands didn’t pay a penny to the UFC or its official broadcasting partners.

UFC 246 was widely available on ‘pirate’ IPTV services and unlicensed sports streaming sites over the weekend. However, it was also broadcast on platforms that have less of a bad reputation for piracy such as Twitch, for example, with one particular instance ending in disaster for the person behind the illicit stream.

On Saturday night and for reasons best known to him, Twitch user SkarrsWorld streamed the UFC 246 PPV on his channel to what appears to have been a fairly limited audience. However, during a promo section of the event featuring UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, a personal message notification popped up on screen and was immediately broadcast along with the pirated PPV.

While the text in the message raises all sorts of questions, this disaster had the potential to go unnoticed to the wider public. However, an eagle-eyed viewer of the stream noticed the error and turned the section into a clip which was then shared around on social media.

Just a few hours ago it had already been seen at least 100,000 times and at the time of writing, more than 146,000 views are being reported. That’s a huge audience for what was originally a niche broadcast and while amusing for some, undoubtedly represents a serious breach for the streamer. Having private matters paraded in public is undesirable but in combination with intentional piracy of a PPV event, the gravity increases.

This rookie mistake raises questions of how easy it has become for Joe Public to get into live pirate streaming and the possible consequences for those who get into the game without considering their own security. This type of online infringement has traditionally been carried out by ‘professionals’ with experience of obtaining streams and broadcasting them securely but this Twitch debacle is miles apart. But the issues go deeper than that.

The clip featuring the private message is obviously terribly embarrassing but due to the manner in which the fight played out, the implications of streaming the Conor McGregor vs Donald Cerrone main event on a platform like Twitch are an even bigger cause for concern for the UFC.

From the moment the bell rang to the moment referee Herb Dean called off the fight following a McGregor onslaught, just 40 seconds had passed. To put that into perspective, a fight that had been hyped for weeks (and had dozens of hours of official broadcasting dedicated to it in the lead-up) was over in the space of a GIF. Or, more conveniently, in the Twitch clips that immediately spread like wildfire, even before McGregor could make his victory speech.

While those 40 seconds were just a small part of the pay-per-view, the rest of the card was relatively weak, especially for the casual fans the UFC hopes to scoop up every time McGregor fights. So, when viewed through the prism of considerable dollar costs to view, particularly in the United States, value for money probably wasn’t on the lips of many paying fans at the end of Saturday night.

A pirate Twitch stream or clip, on the other hand, is likely to have proven more than adequate for the passer-by looking for 40 seconds of pure mixed martial arts excitement. In a world where revenue is king, that’s not what the UFC ever wants to hear.

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Last November, Canada’s Federal Court approved the first pirate site blockade in the country.

Following a complaint from major media companies Rogers, Bell and TVA, the Court ordered several major ISPs to block access to domains and IP-addresses of the pirate IPTV service GoldTV.

These types of blocking efforts are common in quite a few countries. However, in Canada they are new, which means that developments are closely watched by both supporters and opponents.

One of these newer developments is the expansion of the blocklist with new domain names. After the initial injunction was ordered GoldTV became accessible through new addresses, effectively circumventing the court’s measures. This was dealt with by blocking the new domains as well.

This extension of the court’s order was permitted under the injunction and signed off by the court. This order is also public to those who pay to access it, which allows us to report on it.

However, as more and more blocks are issued this process may become harder to follow. It would be more transparent if ISPs published a list of blocked domains and IP-addresses. This would make it possible for the public to see what’s going on and report errors. If there are any.

This transparency idea isn’t too far-fetched. Canada’s current net neutrality regulations require ISPs to disclose what traffic management practices they use. Disclosing a list of blocked domain names and IP-addresses could fall into the same category.

As we were unable to find any ISP publicly listing this information on a page that’s available outside its network, we decided to ask them whether they had any plans to provide one.

In addition, we also asked what technical means the ISPs use to block domain names. Is it a simple DNS redirect, or are there more invasive techniques in use?

After waiting for several days, we still only have a response from one Internet provider. The ten remaining companies simply stayed quiet and didn’t even acknowledge receipt of our questions.

The company that did respond is TekSavvy, which also happens to be the only ISP that appealed the blocking injunction.

TekSavvy’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, Andy Kaplan-Myrth, informs us that they already provide detailed information to blocked users. This includes links to all the blocked domains and the court order itself.

In the future, TekSavvy plans to make this available to outsiders as well. The ISP shared a copy of the info page (pdf) with us but it’s not linked from the ISP’s website yet.

The information shows that TekSavvy is using DNS blocking. It effectively changes the DNS entry so the domains point to the blocking notice instead of the regular page.

Kaplan-Myrth notes that this works but adds that the blockade can be circumvented when subscribers switch to alternative DNS providers such as Google, Cloudflare, or OpenDNS.

While we are pleased with TekSavvy’s openness, the lack of response from the other ISPs isn’t very encouraging when it comes to transparency. We contacted Bell, Rogers, SaskTel, Cogeco, Eastlink, Distribitel, Fido, Shaw, Telus, and Videotron, without hearing back.

Although more transparency is welcome, the Canadian system is quite open compared to some other countries. In the UK for example, none of the blocklist changes are publicized beyond the initial court orders. This means that it’s more or less a guess how many are blocked.

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Before taking direct legal action against alleged copyright infringers, it helps if the identities of those people are known to the potential plaintiff. One method to obtain this information is to file an application for a DMCA subpoena.

Commonly filed against domain registries and Cloudflare, DMCA subpoenas can require such companies to give up the names of their allegedly-infringing customers, who are often the operators of ‘pirate’ sites. The process of obtaining a subpoena is attractive and relatively easy since the applications are rarely subjected to much scrutiny and can yield useful results.

Last week adult company AMA Multimedia (better known for its Casting Couch X and various other brands) filed an application at a Washington court demanding that Cloudflare provide identifying information of customers said to have infringed the company’s copyrights.

According to AMA, it previously asked Cloudflare to remove or disable access to around three dozen URLs, mostly JPG images and direct content links, on domains including the 12 million visits per month Pornmilo.com and the 15 million visits per month HLSMP4.com. With that content apparently still intact, AMA asked the court for permission to demand information from Cloudflare to identify the alleged infringers.

“For the period January 1, 2016 through the present, produce all documents and account records that identify the person(s) or entities that caused the infringement of the material described in the attached Exhibit B DMCA notifications to the DMCA Agent for Cloudflare, Inc. and/or who unlawfully uploaded AMA Multimedia LLC’s copyrighted works at the URLs listed in the notifications, including but not limited to identification by names, email addresses, IP addresses, user history, posting history, physical addresses, telephone numbers, and any other identifying information,” the subpoena to Cloudflare reads.

In respect of the phrase “person(s) or entities that caused the infringement”, that could mean the operators of the various listed domains – pornmilo.com, javbeautiful.com, 3fu.xyz, 4fu.xyz, hlsmp4.com, o0-1.com, o0-2.com, o0-3.com, o0-4.com, and o0-5.com. However, when it comes to identifying the underlying infringers, that could be more tricky.

When one visits Pornmilo.com, the platform gives the initial impression of being a YouTube-like site, presumably one that hosts its own content. On closer inspection, however, the site claims not to host any video content at all.

Indeed, it appears that the videos are embedded having been supplied by Fembed, a service that advertises itself as an “All-in-one Video Platform Designed by webmasters, for webmasters.” Essentially, people can host their video files on Fembed and serve them on another site, with or without revenue-generating advertising.

Fembed.com isn’t mentioned in the DMCA subpoena but it appears to be connected to HLSMP4.com, which is mentioned multiple times. Furthermore, javbeautiful.com, 3fu.xyz, 4fu.xyz and indeed all the other domains redirect to Fembed.com, so it’s possible that they have the same owners. AMA seem pretty keen to find out exactly who they are.

That being said, it is far from clear how Cloudflare itself can establish who uploaded the infringing content on HLSMP4, Fembed, and the other sites so it can hand that information to AMA. At this early stage that may not concern AMA too much and it’s possible that outcome is already being anticipated. Nevertheless, the DMCA subpoena has the ability to get closer to the targets in a cheap and relatively easy fashion.

The DMCA subpoena documents can be found here and here (pdf, NSFW)

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